Towards a Conservative Foreign Policy

Andrew Bacevich’s cover article for the new issue of the magazine is worth reading in its entirety. Not surprisingly, I endorse the priorities he proposes. Here Prof. Bacevich identifies what conservatives can and should do in the foreign policy debate:

Exposing the excesses of American militarism and the futility of the neo-imperialist impulses to which Washington has succumbed since the end of the Cold War. When it comes to foreign policy, the conservative position should promote modesty, realism, and self-sufficiency. To the maximum extent possible, Americans should “live within,” abandoning the conceit that the United States is called upon to exercise “global leadership,” which has become a euphemism for making mischief and for demanding prerogatives allowed to no other nation. Here the potential exists for conservatives to make common cause with members of the impassioned antiwar left.

In practical terms, it should go without saying that this rules out preventive war. Few things better reflect the belief that the U.S. should enjoy “prerogatives allowed to no other nation” than the idea that the U.S. has the right to attack other countries for what they might do in the future. The U.S. should also be less involved in supporting other states’ internal political opposition, which is often the very definition of “making mischief” and meddling where we aren’t wanted by most of the people in these countries. The U.S. should be reducing how much it spends to subsidize the defense of countries that can readily provide for their own defense, and it should be cutting back on the overseas commitments it already has instead of adding to them. Specifically, that would mean no more NATO expansion, no new security guarantees to other states elsewhere in the world, and a review of the existing guarantees that the U.S. has made to determine whether or not they are outdated and irrelevant to American security today. Conservatives in the U.S. should be interested in trying as much as possible to get the United States back to the position of being at least a normal major power that has no special obligations and assumes no special authority or rights.

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15 Responses to Towards a Conservative Foreign Policy

“Few things better reflect the belief that the U.S. should enjoy “prerogatives allowed to no other nation” than the idea that the U.S. has the right to attack other countries for what they might do in the future.”

The Iraq War may have been very controversial, but the United States did go into Iraq with a coalition of allies.

“The U.S. should also be less involved in supporting other states’ internal political opposition, which is often the very definition of “making mischief” and meddling where we aren’t wanted by most of the people in these countries.”

If a country has an authoritarian regime and is an adversary of the U.S. or if a country is in political transition from dictatorship to democracy and is important to U.S. interests, then I think that the U.S. government has every right to promote and encourage regime change or democratic political reforms in that country. Now yes, many political dissidents in these countries don’t want our help, but many others do. An example of course is the opposition movement in Iran, which Obama refused to openly support and otherwise only supported timidly.

I don’t care how many other governments cooperated in invading Iraq. The reality is that it was a U.S.-driven project and all of the supporting governments participated because they wanted to curry favor with the U.S. Preventive war doesn’t suddenly become prudent or wise because one has a large number of allies helping you to wage it.

The Green movement is a terrible example. That movement didn’t want U.S. support and wouldn’t have profited from it if it had been forthcoming. Had the Green movement somehow prevailed, it would have had little or no effect on U.S.-Iranian relations one way or the other. It would have been a case of swapping one supporter of the current Iranian system with another. The Iranian election dispute was none of our business. It’s exactly the sort of dispute in which our government has no role and nothing at stake.

According to this–http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_invasion_of_Iraq–there were only 4 countries involved in the initial invasion–the US, UK, Australia, & Poland–and the US supplied over 75% of the troops. (namely 148,000 vs 45,000 from UK, 2000 from Australia, and 194 from Poland)…

So–we had the UK on our side–and then token forces from Australia and Poland. Later on–other countries came to help during the occupation–but we were bribing them to be there to a large extent (we gave Turkey $8.5 billion in loan guarantees for 10k troops)–and then many started leaving in 2004..

What’s amazing (and heartening) to me is that Bacevich’s very first point is that conservatives should conserve; i.e, care about the fate of the planet. He doesn’t quite have the nerve to say the words climate change, but he calls for conservatives to embrace tree-hugging granola crunchers.

Could it happen? I have my doubts. But as a long and remarkably factual/smart piece by a pollster for the WSJ recently pointed out, the younger generation — regardless of region and ideology — believes in climate change, and wants action. The GOP should listen. After all, it has nothing to lose…but a generation of voters.

I can’t believe there are conservatives who still regard contemporary actions as primary engagements. Everything the neocons stand to defend us from was set in motion decades ago by previous interventions. We must stop the madness! The extent to which we currently involve ourselves in the Arab Spring is the extent to which Americans will die in 15-20 years and nobody will be wise enough to recall our actions now.

We cannot have the memory of a gnat and the bravado if a bull in heat. Anti-war NOW should be the rallying cry of conservatives.

“People around the world want somebody to exercise global leadership. If not the United States, then it would be the corrupt, inept United Nations or China in the future. And what prerogatives does the United States demand that are allowed to no other nation? If you are talking about preemptive war, well that may be very controversial, but the U.S. did go into Iraq with a coalition of allies.”

Wow…where to begin..first off–put simply–on every conceivable strategic, tactical, and international relations level, the invasion of Iraq was an abject failure. So, let me get this right: if I can just convince a few friends to join me, go to your house, turn the place upside down looking for weapons, shoot your family, and then blow the place up, you would just call that ‘controversial’? Never mind the death of thousands of US military forces, the destruction of 100,00+ innocent lives, the billions in infrastructure destruction, the millions of refugees, the uprooting of Christians from their ancient homelands, the trillions in war costs, the removal of Iran’s primary regional counter-balance, and the undercutting of claims to a higher moral standing following the use of torture?

Nice.

Next, let’s just blithely assume that we somehow have the RIGHT to exercise ‘global leadership’. Please point to some evidence that “people around the world want somebody to exercise global leadership.” But wait, you can’t use polls to prove this “because conducting foreign policy according to global opinion polls could be harmful to our interests or national security.”

How about we try to put this in a coherent form: we have no RIGHT to ‘lead’ other nations and, as you correctly (inadvertently?) pointed out, we have no OBLIGATION to do so either. Finally, we can’t AFFORD to carry defense free-riders (see ‘moral hazard’).

“If a country has an authoritarian regime and is an adversary of the U.S. or if a country is in political transition from dictatorship to democracy and is important to U.S. interests, then I think that the U.S. government has every right to promote and encourage regime change or democratic political reforms in that country…An example of course is the opposition movement in Iran, which Obama refused to openly support and otherwise only supported timidly.”

Hmm…so you supported our action in Libya? You know the one, where we helped overthrow Gaddafi by supporting al Qaeda fighters, which then led to a Pandora’s box of weaponry let lose across NW Africa, which then led to the brutal conflict we now see in Mali?

Our financial crisis helped drive the rest of the world’s economies over the cliff. If China decided it was in their best interest to change our regime to one less susceptible to these problems, would they have that ‘right’? Objectively, our interventions have led to more civilian deaths since WWII than almost any other nation. Would other nations have the ‘right’ to overthrow our government as well?

Wesley,
I apologize for being brutal. I have seen these arguments for so many years now, that I sometimes forget that some folks haven’t come out from under the Fox News umbrella to see the real world. Fact is, I was about where you were 10 years ago. I believed just about everything my government told me about international relations. Then I realized they were just as capable of incompetence in the IR realm as they were in the domestic policy one.

cfountain72, you wrote: “Hmm…so you supported our action in Libya? You know the one, where we helped overthrow Gaddafi by supporting al Qaeda fighters, which then led to a Pandora’s box of weaponry let lose across NW Africa, which then led to the brutal conflict we now see in Mali?”

This is at least partly because of Obama’s disastrous “leading from behind” strategy. For some warped reason, Obama relied on the United Nations and the Arab League for permission to go into Libya and when he did go into Libya, it really was too late. And once Obama was in Libya, he almost immediately punted the conduct of the war to Britain, France, and Canada. Those countries have relatively capable and experienced militaries, but nothing like the U.S. military.

The U.S. had to keep rearming the British, French, and Canadian Air Forces, because they didn’t have enough weapons. Britain, France, and Canada also don’t have the command and control capabilities that the U.S. does. Britain, France, and a few other countries had military trainers on the ground in Libya (these are not the same as conventional ground forces), but the U.S. never did. If Obama had allowed the U.S. to stay more involved for a longer period of time in the Libyan War, then Gaddafi may have been overthrown a lot sooner, Libya could have become more stable, and neighboring countries may not have been adversely affected.

And you don’t have to apologize for being brutal. I’m brutal sometimes in these comments. Peace be with you.